You Can’t Be Sirius?

By Mike Gange

 

I’ve had to do some long road trips over the past year. Ten hours in the car in one direction on a Thursday, and ten hours back again on a Sunday. My friend Phil joked that I drove for 24-hours to see a four hour football game. I said it wasn’t true, but of course it was; I just couldn’t let Phil know he was right, or how silly it sounded when he said it that way.

But those trips were worthwhile, because thanks to Sirius Satellite radio, I’ve gotten to listen to some long forgotten rock‘n’roll classics. Now I will grant you there are some channels on the satellite radio I will not listen to. The Martha Stewart channel would be one. There are only so many ways you can paint a room, make new muffin designs, or display your drapes. I figured I knew all I needed to know in that department.

The Nascar Sports Channel would be another. Why is it exciting for the fans to watch somebody else drive 500 times around an oval at a speed that is nearly three times the legal limit, only to edge out your competition by two car lengths? Why isn’t say, 200 laps good enough? Or say, ten laps. I figure if you can beat somebody in ten laps, you can call yourself a winner. With the money you would save on gas, you could take the whole pit crew out to lunch.

Anyway, I’ve listened to The Vault quite a bit. Or Classic Re-wind. And the things I had forgotten! Those long tunes, those great guitar solos, those driving beats. I like the fact that the songs are long, sometimes seven minutes or more. This isn’t where you are going to hear those three-minute radio edits. Nor is this where you are going to hear the playlist repeated every top of the hour, bottom of the hour and quarter hour. It’s a chance to re-discover some old favourites. Remember The Who? I mean before their music was commercialized and edited for the latest version of CSI: From Your Town. Baba O’reilly is worth an extended listen. So is Manfred Mann. And no, I don’t mean “Do-Wah-Diddie.” I mean “Blinded by the Light,” the old song by Springsteen, that seems to be almost tailor-made for the call and response lyrics of the Manfred Mann band. Or Golden Earring’s “Twilight Zone” which is subtitled “Where the bullet hits the bone.” Have you recently heard Peter Schilling’s answer to David Bowie’s “Ground control to Major Tom” which is called “Major Tom (Coming Home).  Or Pablo Cruise?

Pablo Cruise (circa 1977)

Pablo Cruise, for heaven’s sake. Now, that’s a band I had long forgotten. “Love will find a way.” “How long has this been goin’ on?” “Sailing to paradise.” “A place in the sun.”  ”Cool Love.”  I took the time to look them up on YouTube, and was shocked at how dated the band looked. They had the late-70’s long hair, moustaches, and the post-hippie fashions of painted on jeans, super-skinny baseball-style undershirts: the kind of outdated look that nearly put me off their music – but that music: searing guitar solos, drumming that never misses a beat, and the kind of harmonies usually reserved for church choirs.

And of course I was blown away by Steely Dan. They had a few radio-shortened tunes, so it was easy to overlook “Aja” or “Deacon Blues.”

These are the kinds of songs that have stuck in my head, long after the ten hour drive has been completed. I’ve enjoyed them so much that I have taken to carrying a notepad in my car consol, so I can write a note to remind myself that I need to refresh my memory of some of these old beauties.

And, yes, I am Sirius about Pablo Cruise.    

Reggie van Snooty-Nose III and his friend Eddie

 

A long time ago, when my wife and I were still dating, she went off to Calgary for a week, so I went away to Halifax for a weekend to visit a friend of mine who had finished law school and was in his first year as an associate in a decent law office. A pal of his from law school was also visiting, but this guy – Reggie van Snooty-Nose III – was working in a law office on Bay Street in Toronto.

Reggie van Snooty-nose III was a typical Uppity-Canadian, and his law office was on the 13^th floor, in fact I think the office was 1313 in this tower on Bay Street, in a building, he told me, that had his grandfather’s name on the cornerstone. His great-grandfather had been a legal advisor to one of the Fathers of Confederation, he said, on the spot where this office tower now stands, and where his dad now practiced law. A day after he’d arrived back in Uppity Canada from the maritime colonies, he said, the painters were putting up his name on the glass doors in the front office: van Snooty-Nose II and III, law offices, purveyors of gloom and doom, and proprietors of a walnut-panelled board room. 

I don’t go much for snooty anything, and Reggie had that in spades. But Reggie wasn’t really a bad guy, once we got a half-dozen beer into him. That is the thing about some of those maritime beers: only available in packaging that results in merry-times. Once Reggie loosened up his loquacious tongue, and melted the sterling silver rod from up his backside, he turned out to be able to tell a good joke – you know the kind of joke a common man could relate to – not one of those country club giggles they tell on the 13^th floor of some Bay Street monolith.  

We partied that night and Reggie loosened up more and more. He had the edge on me in the education department, no question, but he could only marginally keep up with me in the party department.  He pooped out about midnight; I went on for a few more hours. I thought it was kind of funny that I was five years older than him, but he couldn’t hang in there.

The next morning, I had been up about an hour and was sipping on a coffee when he came into the kitchen, said he needed a good run, and oh, by the way did I want to go?

I guessed it was payback for me out-gunning him the night before, and he thought it would be an easy task – show up this old guy, outrunning him ‘til he cried uncle, even if he was a tiny bit hung over. I laced up my street sneakers – they were the only pair I had – while Reggie decided on one of about three pair he had with him. We jogged through city traffic – up South Street, along Spring Garden, dodged the buses on Barrington, ran up through Point Pleasant Park, and circled back to Barrington where it makes a hill with Morris. Somewhere in the park, Reggie stepped it up a tiny bit, picking up the pace and I let him lead, occasionally wiping sweat off my face and glasses, but never stopping the run. I guess we had gone maybe seven or eight k’s by that time, and I had stayed more-or-less with Reggie-the-third.

At Morris though, Reggie decided it was time to really crank ‘er up. Nothing like a good hill, he said, to end in a flourish. What Reggie did not know was that distance was not my thing. But a good sprint, now that I could do.

He took off, hoping, I think, to leave me in the late spring sidewalk dust. I took two or three strides and was right beside him, and said not too bad a hill, eh kid? Reggie found another gear, sped up and pulled away from me for three or four strides, so I hit it a bit harder too, and pulled up beside him again and just grinned at him. The Reggie really burned it, and I realized we were only about a hundred yards from home. Now, at that time a hundred yard sprint was how we ended every rugby practice, so I just booted ‘er, and I left Reggie high stepping his best shot.

I crossed the property line at my friend’s house, and looked back. Reggie was a good fifty yards behind me, and at least a street corner away.       

A few seconds later he puffed into a stop, and then barfed right onto the tulips that were just poking up through the ground.

After a few minutes of silent recovery, with his hands on his knees, he said, that was interesting, now what are we gonna do?

Let’s grab a beer, I said. Reggie turned a whiter shade of pale.

But this isn’t really a story about Reggie-the third. It’s about Reggie’s luggage. Or rather about Reggie’s luggage manufacturer.

On Sunday, Reggie had to head to the airport, and he packed up his burnished leather bag, monogrammed with Reggie 1-2-3 near the handle. It was, I noticed, an Eddie Bauer bag. To me, the bag, the monogram, the snootiness of Reggie-the-number, and the Bay Street uppitiness were all tied together.  

This was my first encounter with any Eddie Bauer product.   

A week or so later, Janice came back from Calgary. Did I know anything about Eddie Bauer, she said? In fact I did. I said it was a company that only appealed to rich snobby kids like Reggie-the-third. After I finished unloading on the company, (and man, I let them have it) Janice said she had gone to an Eddie Bauer store in Calgary. She had bought a nice coat in the store, she said, and since I did not like the company, she would just keep the coat for herself.

I knew right there that I had put both feet in my mouth. No amount of back-peddling was going to unhinge her, either.

Eventually she gave me the coat. Eventually I also got the girl. And eventually I came to love that coat, and yes, it was anything except snooty.

Speaking of that, I wonder how Reggie van Snooty-Nose the third is these days.   

 

Three Minutes to the Stars!

Nov 8, 2008

I went to a hockey game the other day, and one of the songs being played just before the players came on the ice was Allan Parson’s “Sirius.” I didn’t know the name of the selection then. But a couple of days later, at a football game, guess what…same song.  I asked one of the organizers of the football game, and he wasn’t sure of the name but thought it was the Chicago Bulls’ opening song. 

I found it interesting how the piece lends itself to hockey, football and basketball.  I got thinking about some of the songs that are used as fight songs, or motivational selections.

One of the most underrated, in my mind, is Van Halen. Maybe the antics of David Lee Roth took away from what the band could do, and although the 1980’s video of Jump got lots of airplay, it does not really tell the viewer how good these musicians really are. Take the “Theme from Top Gun,” which I think is played in the movie when Tom Cruise is scooting along on his motorcycle, driving fast and alongside him is a jet taking off. Eddie Van Halen joins Joe Satriani for the intertwining of guitars, trading licks the way some people finish each other’s sentences.

And Van Halen’s “Finish what you started” has energy that absolutely rocks. This time, Lee Roth’s vocals are layered over the guitars and the song would not be complete without his growls and yelps.

Some songs are just over-played. Take for example Queen’s “We will rock you” or “Another one bites the dust.” We hear such small snippets of them on a regular basis in the rinks, gyms or stadiums that is understandable that one could forget how good they are as songs.   

BTO’s “Taking Care of Business” and “You ain’t seen nothing yet” are similarly underrated in generating listening pleasure, because they are used to punctuate every stop in the action. Maybe they are the most over-used, because hardly a day goes by in my sports world, when the songs are not used to send a message both to the opposition and the audience. It is the same for Gary Glitter’s “Rock-n-roll Pt 2” or Jefferson Starship’s “We built this city.”

I know there are thousands of others that can pump us up or cool us down. Take some of Ray Charles’ energetic tunes, especially a couple from his Genius album, and you could both tame a circus and motivate the near dead. Listen to the Staples Singers, and you would find a couple that will leave you breathless. Some of those religious songs can literally have you looking over the mountain.

How about Pablo Cruise’s “Find a new place in the sun” for a song that gets you going? And if you really want to rub it in, you want to show the opposition that its season is now over, try Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Goodbye.” That’s better than any insult Shakespeare could conjure up. 

Still, there is something magical about “Sirius.” It’s filled with anticipation, tension and possibility. Sometimes, in your face isn’t the answer. This understated selection teases, delivers and satisfies – in a three minute span. 

 

 

Little book speaks volumes

By Mike Gange

 

Passchendaele: An Illustrated History
By Norman Leach
Coteau Books, $19.95, 48 pages

 

Ninety years ago this month, the war to end all wars came to an end on November 11^th. It was a war that tested the courage of Canadian soldiers, made heroes and goats of the military leadership, and cost hundreds of thousands of lives. 

In the Belgian town of Passcendaele, the battle-hardened Canadian Corps, sometimes called the ‘Storm troopers’ because, like a storm, they could not be stopped, experienced a hell unlike anything they had ever seen. Amid the mud, the blood, the chlorine gas and the artillery shells, the Canadian Corps lost more than 16, 000 men.

Norman Leach’s new book details the horror of the battles fought in the trenches at this tiny village –battles that were considered victories after 16 days of heavy close-range fighting, but proved to be pointless after the enemy re-took the ground shortly afterwards. The book is perfect for high school students,  as it chronicles the horrors of this battle, and leaves the reader wondering if it is all worth it.

The timing of the release of the book is perfect, coming out as close as it does to Remembrance Day. A fortunate overlap with the release of the movie of the same name by Canadian director Paul Gross seems to make the foreword by a natural fit too.

 

Mike Gange regularly reviews books on the mass media — advertising, comics, movies, radio, television. etc. You can find more of his reviews at  http://www.frankwbaker.com/gange.htm

Back to School

 Back to School

by Mike Gange

I returned to teaching this fall after nearly a two year absence. One year was on sick leave, and the second year was an educational leave that allowed me to work on a Masters of Journalism degree at Carleton U.

I had forgotten just how hard it is to be a teacher. Marking papers that are barely up to standard, reading writing that is illegible, sitting for hours at a desk doing work that is under-valued by both the kids and administration, dealing with kids with crappy attitudes who think they know more than you do—all part of an under-appreciated job. Then add in the personal agenda of administrators in the school—trying to prove to the school-parents’ council that the principal has a positive P-R image, when in fact it is more ego-driven that pedagogically proper. And speaking of egos, I returned to school to have a guy who is in his second year of teaching – and who had picked up some of my courses during my absence—insist that he knew the secrets to teaching journalism. He lectured me while standing next to me at a urinal. His publishing credentials? Zero. (“Ya, right buddy, just keep holding your dick.”)

The story is told about the frog that is dropped into the boiling water. The frog quickly hops out.  But take the same frog, put it into a pot of luke-warm water, and then bring the water to a boil. The frog will stay until it falls asleep, and dies. This is very much what we are doing to our teachers. We lure them into a nice contract, give them a room, some genuine nice kids that are easy to please, and then turn the heat up.

Add in tests that your principal insists will be returned within days, (and heaven forbid these tests should not measure anything intelligent, or move the kids up Blooms taxonomy to higher order thinking skills, but should be short answers not designed to challenge the kids’ thinking skills), sprinkle in reports to parents that your principal has promised you will deliver every month, ten a year, not to mention the usual full length report cards, and cover it all with a union official or two more interested in mediocre commonalities rather than teaching excellence…well, we have cooked up a poisonous killer stew.

Unless we do something about how teachers teach, how they are encouraged, managed and manipulated, and how much work there is, we will lose the best and brightest because they will find work where they are valued.

A book I have been reading since I got back is “Get out of your own way: The 5 keys to surpassing everyone’s expectations” by Robert K. Cooper. It is a wonderfully rich resource that shows the most successful actions originate in the heart rather than the brain.     

It should be required reading in teacher-education schools and for administrators.